The present invention relates to wireless communications, and more particularly to input processing in the wireless environment.
Wireless communications systems generally involve a plurality of mobile units that send data to and receive data from stationary base stations. Such communications are typically packet based, with each sent packet containing payload data, error detection and correction data, and overhead data such as information identifying the packet source and destination. In bi-directional packet based communications systems, the device receiving a sent packet will often respond by transmitting an acknowledgment so that the sending device can confirm transmission.
Wireless e-mail and text messaging are growing in popularity. E-mail tends not to be very interactive in that an entire message, often several sentences long, is transmitted in one transmission to a destination where it waits to be retrieved by the recipient. Text messaging systems tend to be more interactive, with typically short messages being exchanged between two or more devices in close to real time. In some text messaging systems, input text is buffered and then sent as soon as a carriage return or other designated submit key is pressed. Some messaging systems are fully interactive in that each character is transmitted as soon as it is entered (for example a telnet session). Both buffered line and fully interactive systems can have shortcomings in high latency environments. In buffered line systems, the transmitted block size tends to be large, resulting in delays while the mobile transmitting unit waits for the transmission to be received, processed and acknowledged by the base station. Fully interactive character-by-character transmission systems use smaller transmission packets, but each packet includes overhead and requires a transmitted acknowledgement from the base station for each character, which can be resource inefficient and also result in perceived delays at the mobile unit.
Accordingly, an input processing and transmission system that can provide improved performance in a high latency wireless channel is desired.